Of the Boxhttp://ofthebox.org
Of the BoxSun, 18 Mar 2018 12:22:54 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.5https://i2.wp.com/ofthebox.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/logo-1.png?fit=32%2C32Of the Boxhttp://ofthebox.org
3232127005735Here’s Why You Should Be Sleeping Nakedhttp://ofthebox.org/heres-sleeping-naked/
http://ofthebox.org/heres-sleeping-naked/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 12:22:54 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22050Burn your pajamas and throw away the oversized t-shirts. We all need a little bit more nudity in our lives, especially when it comes to sleeping. DNews neatly wraps up all the latest science on the benefits of sleeping au naturale in this recent short video. The logic behind it is fairly simple – we […]

]]>Burn your pajamas and throw away the oversized t-shirts. We all need a little bit more nudity in our lives, especially when it comes to sleeping.

DNews neatly wraps up all the latest science on the benefits of sleeping au naturale in this recent short video. The logic behind it is fairly simple – we sleep better at slightly lower body temperatures, and the less clothing, the less heat. A very slight increase in temperature can increase activity in areas of the brain that regulate sleep cycles, resulting in a more disturbed sleep. Studies have shown that a decrease even as tiny as 0.4°C (1.1°F) can make all the difference.

For guys, that temperature drop can help increase your sperm count, since sperm is best produced at temperatures just below our core body temperature. For women, being free from restrictive clothing can allow your private bits to air and cool, which is important since harmful bacteria can easily thrive in warm and moist areas.

Sleeping naked with a partner also has its biochemical benefits. Skin-to-skin contact is proven to increase the release of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone”, which can boost your mood, help maintain your immune system, and even spark feelings of emotional intimacy.

Just in case you needed any more excuses to sleep in your birthday suit, check out the video below.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/heres-sleeping-naked/feed/022050Bag Containing 54 Severed Human Hands Linked To Forensics Laboratoryhttp://ofthebox.org/bag-containing-54-severed-human-hands-linked-forensics-laboratory/
http://ofthebox.org/bag-containing-54-severed-human-hands-linked-forensics-laboratory/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 12:19:27 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22046Recently, a bag containing 54 severed human hands was found by a river in the frigid expanses of southeastern Russia. Although this certainly sounds like a tale with high-level cloak-and-dagger-esque layers, one recent report suggests that they were dumped by a forensics lab, not left behind by the dealings of a criminal enterprise or corrupt […]

]]>Recently, a bag containing 54 severed human hands was found by a river in the frigid expanses of southeastern Russia. Although this certainly sounds like a tale with high-level cloak-and-dagger-esque layers, one recent report suggests that they were dumped by a forensics lab, not left behind by the dealings of a criminal enterprise or corrupt government.

Just in case you’ve missed the evolution of this strange tale over the past week or so, a bag containing 27 pairs of human hands, along with some medical bandages, were found in a bag on the banks of the Amur River in Russia, and naturally, people are baffled, and a little unnerved. Generally speaking, bags left behind without anyone watching over them tend to contain some sort of nefarious unmentionables in stories like these, but still, it’s not even a single pair of hands – it’s 27 of them.

As you’d expect, hypotheses abounded as to where they may have come from, ranging from the sinister to the surprisingly benign. As they were found by a fisherman on a small river islet just 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the Chinese border, some suspect they’d been dumped in said neighboring country, rather than by someone in the nearby town of Khabarovsk.

As has since been spotted by Gizmodo and others, a report from the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation – which handles criminal investigations – announced that the hands belonged to a forensics laboratory.

“The biological objects (hands) found are not of a criminal origin, but were disposed of in a manner not provided for by law,” the (translated) post reads. “A legal assessment will be made of the actions of officials of the forensic medical institution in the city of Khabarovsk responsible for the disposal of these biological objects.”

It seems that, as part of an ongoing investigation, authorities have pinpointed the clumsy or lazy actions of a scientific research institution on the emergence of these hands on the banks of the Amur River. Although something has clearly gone wrong with regards to proper disposal procedures, whatever they may be, the removal of hands in this sense isn’t necessarily unusual.

During autopsies, various organs are often removed (temporarily or permanently, depending on the individual case) while causes of death are being established. At this stage, though, it’s not clear why so many hands would be placed in a single bag – was this part of some medical exercise?

Hopefully, more details will come to light, but we’d suspect that this is a macabre story whose details will remain permanently fuzzy.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/bag-containing-54-severed-human-hands-linked-forensics-laboratory/feed/022046Stephen Hawking Asked To Have This Equation On His Tombstone. Here’s What It Meanshttp://ofthebox.org/stephen-hawking-asked-equation-tombstone-heres-means/
http://ofthebox.org/stephen-hawking-asked-equation-tombstone-heres-means/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 12:13:23 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22042Renowned cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking passed away in the early hours of March 14, news that has saddened us all. His scientific output was truly incredible and his work in engaging the wider public in the complexities of the universe will continue to inspire. His most famous formula, describing the entropy of a black hole, […]

]]>Renowned cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking passed away in the early hours of March 14, news that has saddened us all. His scientific output was truly incredible and his work in engaging the wider public in the complexities of the universe will continue to inspire.

His most famous formula, describing the entropy of a black hole, might even adorn his tombstone. He declared his wishes for this in 2002, during a workshop on the future of theoretical physics and cosmology held to mark his 60th birthday.

The formula is the centerpiece of our understanding of black holes and a crowning achievement for Hawking, who worked on it with his colleague Jacob Bekenstein. It connects important thermodynamical quantities such as entropy, represented by the capital S, to physical properties of the black hole, namely its area, A. The remaining letters are constants of the universe; k is the Boltzmann constant, c is the speed of light, h-bar is the reduced Planck constant, and G is the universal gravitation constant.

Entropy is described in school physics textbooks as a measure of disorder within a macroscopic system. But it can also be defined as the amount of information that you can pack into an object. And this is the crucial importance of the formula. The entropy of a black hole is proportional to its surface area, not its volume. The surface of the black hole is its event horizon, beyond which, nothing can escape.

Understanding the thermodynamics of black holes required the Cambridge physicist to apply quantum mechanics to these incredibly dense objects, and this led to the proposal of Hawking radiation. Black holes had entropy and a temperature.

Hawking himself extended this work to a more general and far-reaching interpretation. The whole universe could be seen as having a “cosmological event horizon” suggesting that the universe as a whole has an entropy value and a specific temperature. This idea was the base for the formulation of the holographic principle, suggesting that all the information encoded in the universe can be interpreted from the properties of a lower dimensional boundary.

There is also another interesting parallel that makes Professor Hawking’s wish even more poignant. The first proposer of entropy was Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann and his tombstone bears the inscription of his own entropy formula. It seems right that Hawking should have his own, too.

Hawking had just recorded a cameo for a new radio version of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, so as that other late, great visionary once wrote (sort of): So long, Professor Hawking, and thanks for all the fish.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/stephen-hawking-asked-equation-tombstone-heres-means/feed/022042Stephen Hawking Had Some Beautiful Advice For People Who Suffer From Depressionhttp://ofthebox.org/stephen-hawking-beautiful-advice-people-suffer-depression/
http://ofthebox.org/stephen-hawking-beautiful-advice-people-suffer-depression/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 12:03:56 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22039Stephen Hawking was known for providing us with complex yet invaluable insights into space, time, and the nitty-gritty of theoretical physics. However, in a 2016 talk, the iconic physicist applied his brilliant mind to a more emotional matter. Hawking gave a poignant message to people suffering from depression, making a poetic comparison between depression and […]

]]>Stephen Hawking was known for providing us with complex yet invaluable insights into space, time, and the nitty-gritty of theoretical physics. However, in a 2016 talk, the iconic physicist applied his brilliant mind to a more emotional matter.

Hawking gave a poignant message to people suffering from depression, making a poetic comparison between depression and a black hole – no matter how dark they seem, neither are impossible to escape.

Hawking said: “The message of this lecture is that black holes ain’t as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought.

“Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up – there’s a way out.”

He gave the speech in front of a crowd of over 400 people on Thursday evening, January 7, as part of the Reith lecture at the Royal Institute in London.

Hawking, who turned 74 the day after the lecture, lived with motor neuron disease for more than 55 years – despite being told he had just two years to live when diagnosed in 1963.

Speaking to the same audience, his daughter Lucy noted Hawking’s incredible mental fitness – both intellectually and emotionally.

“He has a very enviable wish to keep going and the ability to summon all his reserves, all his energy, all his mental focus and press them all into that goal of keeping going,” she said.

“But not just to keep going for the purposes of survival but to transcend this by producing extraordinary work – writing books, giving lectures, inspiring other people with neurodegenerative and other disabilities.”

]]>http://ofthebox.org/stephen-hawking-beautiful-advice-people-suffer-depression/feed/022039WWF Predicts Catastrophic Loss Of Half Of All Plant And Animal Species If We Can’t Curb Emissionshttp://ofthebox.org/wwf-predicts-catastrophic-loss-half-plant-animal-species-cant-curb-emissions/
http://ofthebox.org/wwf-predicts-catastrophic-loss-half-plant-animal-species-cant-curb-emissions/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 12:00:32 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22036If we can’t curb carbon emissions, we’re looking at losing up to half of all plant and animal species in the world’s most biodiverse places by the end of the century, according to a new report by the WWF. The landmark study by the WWF, University of East Anglia, and James Cook University, published today […]

]]>If we can’t curb carbon emissions, we’re looking at losing up to half of all plant and animal species in the world’s most biodiverse places by the end of the century, according to a new report by the WWF.

The landmark study by the WWF, University of East Anglia, and James Cook University, published today in the journal Climate Change, offers a stark warning of what kind of future we may be looking at if we can’t wrestle human-made climate change under control.

“Within our children’s lifetime, places like the Amazon and Galapagos Islands could become unrecognizable, with half the species that live there wiped out by human-caused climate change,” said Tanya Steele, CEO of WWF, in a statement.

The 50-percent warning is the study’s worst-case scenario of a global temperature rise of 4.5°C (8.1°F), but even if the Paris Climate Agreement target of limiting warming to a 2°C (3.6°F) increase is met, places like the Amazon and the Galapagos could lose up to 25 percent of their unique species, the study warns.

The researchers looked at 80,000 plants and animals species in 35 of the world’s most biodiverse, wild-life rich areas around the globe, producing different models for different climate change futures. The results were sobering.

In real terms, it means that 60 percent of all species in Madagascar could go extinct. The Fynbos in South Africa’s Western Cape could lose a third of all species, the Amazon 69 percent of its plants. The Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa could see local extinctions for 90 percent of its amphibians, 86 percent of its birds, and 80 percent of its mammals.

Water shortages, like the one currently experienced in South Africa, due to warmer weather and less rainfall will hit Africa, Asia, South America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Particularly affected will be elephants in Africa, which consume around 190 liters (50 gallons) of water a day, putting them in direct conflict with humans. Conversely, in India, 96 percent of the breeding ground of the Sunderban’s Bengal tigers – of which there are thought to be only 100 left – will be under water.

The loss of so many species would be a blow that could have knock-on effects we haven’t even imagined yet. A study recently published in PNAS was the first to demonstrate that initial species loss, which can irrevocably affect the structure of ecological habitats, leads to follow-on extinctions. We can’t let it get that far.

“The numbers are a bit of a wake-up call,” Stephen Cornelius, chief adviser to WWF on climate issues, told The Guardian. “If there is one message, it is that mitigation makes a big difference.”

]]>http://ofthebox.org/wwf-predicts-catastrophic-loss-half-plant-animal-species-cant-curb-emissions/feed/022036Amateur Sky-Gazers Help To Discover A New Aurora… Called “Steve”http://ofthebox.org/amateur-sky-gazers-help-discover-new-aurora-called-steve/
http://ofthebox.org/amateur-sky-gazers-help-discover-new-aurora-called-steve/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 11:55:57 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22032A gang of amateur aurora chasers have helped to discover a new form of aurora that appears as a narrow band of dancing purple light that arches up into the night sky. They have named it… “STEVE”. These celestial skylights have now been investigated by NASA scientists, who say it is actually a totally new […]

]]>A gang of amateur aurora chasers have helped to discover a new form of aurora that appears as a narrow band of dancing purple light that arches up into the night sky. They have named it… “STEVE”.

These celestial skylights have now been investigated by NASA scientists, who say it is actually a totally new subauroral structure, as explained in a new study published in the journal Science Advances.

“STEVE is essentially a very narrow, usually very faint, curtain of mauve-colored light south of the primary Aurora – or north, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere – reaching from the eastern horizon to the western horizon,” Chris Ratzlaff, one of the aurora chasers who helped to discover STEVE, told IFLScience. “Usually, it’s quite subtle, but it’s been caught a few times quite bright.”

They named it STEVE to avoid referring to it by a name that implied an understanding of its physical properties. It is also a reference to the kid’s movie Over the Hedge, where one of the characters isn’t sure what he is looking at, so he randomly names it Steve. After giving the phenomenon a full investigation, the scientists let STEVE keep its name, justifying it with the backronym “Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement”.

Citizen scientists first captured images of the subauroral arc in Alberta, Canada, on at least 30 dates during 2015 and 2016. It’s also been sighted in New Zealand, Scotland, and a few northern US states.

The citizen scientists were surprised to find that their new friend in the sky had no formal or accurate scientific classification, so they passed on their findings to Dr Elizabeth A MacDonald and her colleagues at NASA. They used satellites to directly observe the ion flow velocity, as well as ion and electron temperatures, within the structure.

Typically, aurora are caused by charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. When these high-speed particles smash into the Earth’s magnetosphere, they let out their energy, creating an array of beautiful green, red, and purple colors that swirl and dance in the sky. The effect is most prominently seen near Earth’s magnetic poles.

The new study explains that this subauroral structure is slightly different, showing a rare type of subauroral ion drift that’s never been documented before. This creates an effect that is totally distinct to the traditional auroral oval.

“This discovery contributes to our wider understanding of the aurora and Earth’s magnetosphere,” lead author Dr. MacDonald, a heliophysicist at NASA, told IFLScience. “That’s telling us that auroras are related to this feature at way lower latitudes than we had previously recognized.”

“Those lower latitudes mean the processes responsible for creating the aurora, that start in Earth’s distant magnetosphere, also extend to the inner magnetosphere for these events,” she added. “This phenomena is not fully understood, and not fully modeled because it is smaller than the resolution of the models we have. Thus we also can’t predict during when or in which types of events it will occur. We are gathering more data all the time, finding new details, and piecing together the clues with the help of new observers and observations.”

]]>http://ofthebox.org/amateur-sky-gazers-help-discover-new-aurora-called-steve/feed/022032What The Universe Looked Like Before The Big Bang, According To Stephen Hawkinghttp://ofthebox.org/universe-looked-like-big-bang-according-stephen-hawking/
http://ofthebox.org/universe-looked-like-big-bang-according-stephen-hawking/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 11:49:57 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22029The latest season of Star Talk ended with a big bang, with host Neil deGrasse Tyson quizzing physics heavyweight Stephen Hawking on a little matter called the origins of the universe. While even top physicists are completely stumped as to what happened before the Big Bang, the cataclysmic event that set our universe in motion […]

]]>The latest season of Star Talk ended with a big bang, with host Neil deGrasse Tyson quizzing physics heavyweight Stephen Hawking on a little matter called the origins of the universe. While even top physicists are completely stumped as to what happened before the Big Bang, the cataclysmic event that set our universe in motion 13.8 billion years ago, there are multiple proposals floating around and Hawking has one of his own.

So, what came before the Big Bang according to Hawking?

Hawking proposes something called the “No Boundary” condition, which he worked on with his collaborator Jim Hartle, a professor of physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara. The proposal is based on Einstein’s theory of relativity, which supposes that space and time form a curved space-time continuum, and a Euclidean approach to quantum gravity, which rejects the existence of a singularity.

The proposal involves replacing real time with a concept called imaginary time. Imaginary time is not imaginary in the sense that it is made up, but in the sense that it is expressed in imaginary numbers. To calculate imaginary time, real time undergoes a Wick rotation, meaning that its coordinates are multiplied by the imaginary root. Imaginary time operates like the fourth dimension of space.

Sounds complicated? Hawking uses the shape of the Earth as a metaphor.

“In the Euclidean approach, the history of the universe in imaginary time is a four-dimensional curved surface like the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions,” Hawking explained.

“In order terms, the Euclidean space-time is a closed surface without end, like the surface of the Earth.”

Meaning, essentially, there are no boundaries or sharp points of singularity from which space-time and all the matter of the universe erupted. There is no Big Bang as such. Rather, time slows down as it reaches the South Pole or singularity, getting slower and slower so that there isn’t a clear beginning. Or, as the Tech Times puts it, “Time was distorted along another dimension, it was always reaching closer to nothing but didn’t become nothing.”

“One can regard imaginary and real time as beginning at the South Pole, which is a smooth point of space-time where the normal laws of physics hold,” said Hawking. “There is nothing south of the South Pole, so there was nothing around before the Big Bang.”

That’s it. In a nutshell, it is impossible to measure events before the Big Bang because time in the way we recognize it simply didn’t exist.

As of right now, this is just pure speculation and one of several hypotheses attempting to explain what triggered the universe into being, including the multiverse model, the collision model, and the bouncing universe model.

Hawking explains his “No Boundary” condition in more detail in a free-to-watch 50-minute documentary on YouTube.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/universe-looked-like-big-bang-according-stephen-hawking/feed/022029Flat-Earther Finally Explains Why Nobody Has Fallen Off The Edgehttp://ofthebox.org/flat-earther-finally-explains-nobody-fallen-off-edge/
http://ofthebox.org/flat-earther-finally-explains-nobody-fallen-off-edge/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 11:47:29 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22024Flat-Earthers are not known for their logic. They’re generally known for their willingness to ignore the facts, and their dank memes. When it comes to explaining the logical flaws in their arguments, however, they tend to fall a little, well, flat. If you ignore all the planetary evidence that points to the Earth being round, […]

]]>Flat-Earthers are not known for their logic. They’re generally known for their willingness to ignore the facts, and their dank memes.

When it comes to explaining the logical flaws in their arguments, however, they tend to fall a little, well, flat. If you ignore all the planetary evidence that points to the Earth being round, the countless experiments you can do at home, or even the photos taken from space, there’s still one major flaw in their argument that needs explaining.

Basically, if the world is flat, why on Earth is the Internet not filled with news stories about people falling off the edge of it to their deaths?

Pretty dank meme there, Flatty.

Well, now one prominent flat-Earther, Connor Murphy, has revealed why this doesn’t happen. He’s concluded the Earth is in fact round. Just kidding. Murphy has concluded that there is no edge at all.

“Fall off into what, do you know what I’m saying? There’s no edge. This is a misconception,” Murphy told Unilad.

“The way we see it is it’s an enclosed system. There’s water above, there’s the firmament – or the dome – and there’s water above it and water below it and there’s no leaving it, there’s no anti-gravity allowing us to float around and find other Suns and stuff.”

So nobody falls off the edge because we’re all in a massive snow globe. Pretty convincing stuff.

“His widow told IFLScience that she won’t mourn for someone who would do something so idiotic”. IFLScience.

In the interview, Murphy went on to accuse NASA of covering up that the Earth was flat in order to make more money, before contradicting his earlier view that we don’t fall off because we’re in a dome.

“Basically if you can imagine the globe squashed down with Antarctica instead of being its own continent, being the perimeter around the side. So a lot of people say that’s an ice wall. It’s more like a shelf or cliff.”

So the reason why we don’t fall off is because of the big ice wall (here be dragons?), and if you get past that you hit the dome. Makes you feel so safe.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/flat-earther-finally-explains-nobody-fallen-off-edge/feed/022024Why Haven’t We Found A Cure For Cancer Yet?http://ofthebox.org/havent-found-cure-cancer-yet/
http://ofthebox.org/havent-found-cure-cancer-yet/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 11:42:30 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22019One in two people will get cancer at some point in their lives. As humbling a fact as that is, it raises the obvious question of what is being done to help prevent it. With all the time and money spent on the disease, why is there not a cure for cancer yet? One of […]

]]>One in two people will get cancer at some point in their lives. As humbling a fact as that is, it raises the obvious question of what is being done to help prevent it. With all the time and money spent on the disease, why is there not a cure for cancer yet?

One of the main issues here is most people’s understanding of what cancer actually is. The word does not refer to a single disease, but is an umbrella term used to talk about hundreds of diseases. For this reason, talk of finding a cure “for cancer” is pretty vague and only useful when discussing the diseases in general terms.

Not only that, but different cancers have different pathologies and subsequently different symptoms. Even within cancer “families”, there can be many different variants of the disease, with differing cell lines giving rise to the diseases seen. This means that it is effectively impossible to study or cure “cancer” as a whole, and thus researchers divide and sub-divide them to focus in on individual variants.

This doesn’t mean that we haven’t found any cures for some cancers though. For example, we’re pretty good at treating testicular cancer, which currently has a survival rate of around 98 percent after a decade, while malignant melanoma is catching up with an 89 percent survival rate after 10 years.

Treating cancer is difficult mainly because of what it actually is. In effect, the disease is derived from our body’s own cells, when a mutation in our DNA causes the growth of the cells to go out of whack. There are plenty of natural systems in place to prevent this from happening, and the mutation that manages to escape these systems is incredibly rare. But by a simple game of numbers, with our cells copying and dividing billions and billions of times, chances are one will slip through.

Because it is derived from our own cells, it’s difficult not only for the immune system to pick them out but for doctors to target the cancerous cells without damaging healthy ones in the process. One of the main areas of research when it comes to treating individual cancers is to try and identify certain markers that are only present on cancer cells. The researchers then try to either develop a drug to attack them or flag them up so that a person’s own immune cells can deal with them on their own.

But unfortunately, things are not even as simple as that. Different people respond to the same treatments differently. What works for one person to treat a specific variety of cancer will not necessarily work for another who has the same type of disease.

This is why people diagnosed with the disease are trialed with different regimes or combinations of treatments to see what is most effective for them. This touches on another aspect of the fight against cancer, in which some teams are working on genetically profiling patients’ individual cancers to create a personalized treatment.

So, while we may never have a single cure for cancer, we’re certainly homing in on treating them. Some are easier to tackle than others and thus make bigger strides, but with more time and more research, we’re certainly getting there.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/havent-found-cure-cancer-yet/feed/022019Scientist Brilliantly Tears Conspiracy Theory About Russian Spy To Shredshttp://ofthebox.org/scientist-brilliantly-tears-conspiracy-theory-russian-spy-shreds/
http://ofthebox.org/scientist-brilliantly-tears-conspiracy-theory-russian-spy-shreds/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 11:31:03 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22016A chemist has brilliantly ripped to shreds a conspiracy theory about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. The poisoning of the former Russian spy in Salisbury in the UK has recently stirred up a lot of conspiracy theories online. The official position, accepted by the governments of the UK, US, Germany, and France, points the finger […]

]]>A chemist has brilliantly ripped to shreds a conspiracy theory about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal.

The poisoning of the former Russian spy in Salisbury in the UK has recently stirred up a lot of conspiracy theories online. The official position, accepted by the governments of the UK, US, Germany, and France, points the finger at Russia for the attack, after an investigation by UK intelligence agencies.

However, this message doesn’t seem to be reaching all sectors of the British public, with rumors and conspiracy theories abundant online.

Why would Putin sanction the murder of a low-ranking, long-retired & pardoned exiled spy just ten days before his Presidential elections? #DeadCat or #FalseFlag?

Despite Russia having the means and the motive to carry out the attack, it seems people are desperately looking for a less terrifying explanation. Unfortunately, there really isn’t one. The alternative explanations all fall at the first hurdle.

A chemist got annoyed with one conspiracy theory that claims that the case is a “WMD scam” used for some unknown purposes to instigate tensions with Russia, a state with vastly superior military capabilities to the UK.

In the piece, titled “The Novichok Story Is Indeed Another Iraqi WMD Scam”, former British Ambassador Craig Murray argues that Novichok – the nerve agent that killed Skripal – doesn’t exist.

“The British Government is claiming to be able instantly to identify a substance which its only biological weapons research centre has never seen before and was unsure of its existence,” Craig writes.

“Worse, it claims to be able not only to identify it, but to pinpoint its origin. Given Dr Black’s publication, it is plain that claim cannot be true.”

The piece doesn’t attempt to propose an alternative explanation, but the title suggests that the author thinks that evidence is being fabricated or exaggerated (as was the case before the Iraq War when claims of WMDs were “sexed up”, which he eludes to in his title).

Enter scientist Clyde Davies. He saw the piece, and, being a chemist, noticed some major chemistry-related flaws and responded accordingly.

“Yet now, the British Government is claiming to be able instantly to identify a substance which its only biological weapons research centre has never seen before and was unsure of its existence. ”
You wouldn’t recognise a mass spectrometer if it hit you smack in your stupid gob.

And how does the mass spectrometer tell you the sample was made in Russia if you don’t have an example of a Russian made one to compare? I shall listen to your reply with genuine interest, despite your completely unprovoked aggression.

But at this point, Clyde, in his own words, could “only read so much conspiracy theory shit before snapping” and proceeded to break down the science, in a brilliant viral Twitter thread.

So now you’re going to lecture me on chemistry? This ought to be interesting. Let me give you some background to all of this. When I heard who the victim was, and that it was a nerve agent, I immediately suspected what the chemical formula was likely to be 1/

This is because I knew about the ‘novichok’ agents. They were developed in the 70s and 80s by Vil Mirzayanov among others, who now lives as an exile in the US. He was so horrified that he went public an eventually to jail in Russia 2/

This is because chemistry is a *science*, and sciences differentiate themselves from other kinds of discipline by allowing people to make *testable predictions*. It’s a branch of *inductive reasoning*. 5/

VX in comparison looks like this. It has a different chemical structure. Just by looking at the structure, a chemist can tell you what the mass, infrared, NMR, UV and other spectra are likely to look like with a high degree of confidence 4/ pic.twitter.com/1eDIskj9lZ

]]>http://ofthebox.org/scientist-brilliantly-tears-conspiracy-theory-russian-spy-shreds/feed/022016How The Milk Of The Humble Platypus Could Help Us Beat Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugshttp://ofthebox.org/milk-humble-platypus-help-us-beat-antibiotic-resistant-superbugs/
http://ofthebox.org/milk-humble-platypus-help-us-beat-antibiotic-resistant-superbugs/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 11:21:34 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22013The first scientists to examine a platypus in 1799 dismissed it as a fake made of different animals sewn together. Centuries later, this bizarre Aussie critter continues to confound us. Now, it appears its milk could be our savior in the fight against antibiotic resistance. Back in 2010, scientists realized that platypus moms produce very […]

]]>The first scientists to examine a platypus in 1799 dismissed it as a fake made of different animals sewn together. Centuries later, this bizarre Aussie critter continues to confound us. Now, it appears its milk could be our savior in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Back in 2010, scientists realized that platypus moms produce very special milk. They found that it has unique bacteria-fighting properties that could be used to kill superbugs. Unlike most other mammals, including us, these weird creatures don’t have teats, so their milk is expressed onto their stomachs where their babies lap it up. This exposes it to the bacteria-filled world so bug-fighting properties are pretty useful.

The duck-billed platypus is certainly an oddity in nature. Although it’s a mammal, it doesn’t really follow mammalian rules. It has the bill of a duck, it lays eggs, and it has venomous spurs poking out of its feet. It belongs to an Australian group of animals called monotremes, which also includes the prickly but adorable pointy-nosed echidnas, otherwise known as spiny anteaters. Monotremes certainly wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Pokémon.

But as well as being bizarre and adorable in equal measures, the platypus could help us treat infections at a time when overprescribing antibiotics is a serious threat to humanity.

Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections, which include many ailments from a chest infection to life-threatening meningitis. They’re our best defense against bacterial diseases, but recently we’ve encountered a problem. Antibiotics are used so much that ever-evolving bacteria are mutating to be resistant to them, forming nasty superbugs like MRSA. If a serious antibiotic-resistant disease broke out and spread across the world, we’d be in pretty big trouble.

Enter the duck-billed platypus.

To investigate exactly how a platypus’ milk is so potent, a team of researchers from CSIRO took a closer look. They managed to isolate the monotreme lactation protein and analyze its structure, which, like the platypus itself, is totally unique.

“Platypus are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry,” lead author Dr Janet Newman said in a statement.

“We’ve characterised a new protein that has unique antibacterial properties with the potential to save lives.”

The team’s findings are published in the journal Structural Biology Communications. They replicated the protein in the lab so they could get a good look at it and discovered a strange never-before-seen 3D fold. This is important because the shape of a protein controls its function.

Adding to this story’s strangeness, the protein has a ringlet-style structure, so obviously, the researchers decided to call it Shirley Temple, after the child-star’s golden locks.

Excitingly, discovering the unique structure of the “Shirley Temple” protein will help scientists in their quest to find alternatives to antibiotics. Platypuses, we salute you.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/milk-humble-platypus-help-us-beat-antibiotic-resistant-superbugs/feed/022013Trump Tells Troops He Wants A New “Space Force”http://ofthebox.org/trump-tells-troops-wants-new-space-force/
http://ofthebox.org/trump-tells-troops-wants-new-space-force/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 11:13:55 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22010US President Donald Trump has expressed a desire to set up a “Space Force”. Nope, that isn’t his latest reality TV series, it is an idea to set up a new branch of the military that would protect America’s place in the geopolitical order through the militarization of space. “Space is a warfighting domain, just […]

]]>US President Donald Trump has expressed a desire to set up a “Space Force”. Nope, that isn’t his latest reality TV series, it is an idea to set up a new branch of the military that would protect America’s place in the geopolitical order through the militarization of space.

“Space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea,” Trump told the crowd at a Marine Corps base in Miramar, California, on Tuesday. “We may even have a Space Force, develop another one, Space Force. We have the Air Force, we’ll have the Space Force.”

“I was saying it the other day – because we’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space – I said, maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the Space Force and I was not really serious,” he goes on. “And then I said, what a great idea. Maybe we’ll have to do that. That could happen.”

He then pointed towards the press box and said something about “fake news”, to which the crowd wildly erupted in applause.

That awkward moment when you’ve been up to no good on your laptop and it’s confiscated by Donald Trump’s Space Force. pic.twitter.com/qJ4Dx0UwlD

It might sound like the talk of a guy who watches too much sci-fi late at night in bed (and the name needs a little bit of work), but it closely mirrors the rhetoric of other high-ranking US officials. Last month, David L Goldfein, a General in the US Air Force, said: “I believe we’re going to be fighting from space in a matter of years.”

Goldfein said today that he was “excited about the dialogue,” according to The Hill.

Bizarrely, however, Trump’s administration actually rejected the proposal to establish a “Space Corps” last year. I guess SpaceX’s recent successes changed his mind?

In another remark at the recent speech, Trump took the opportunity to take a dig at his former opponent Hillary Clinton, boasting: “Very soon we’re going to Mars. You wouldn’t be going to Mars if my opponent won, that I can tell you. You wouldn’t even be thinking about it.”

That’s not exactly true. The Obama administration’s priority for NASA’s manned exploration was to put humans on Mars by the mid-2030s. Trump’s administration changed that goal to put humans back on the Moon, then eventually to Mars. Clinton has never expressed any desire to change Obama’s plan, but hey, politics being politics, anything is possible.

Needless to say, his speech was enough to send the Internet into its usual pop culture-infused overdrive:

]]>http://ofthebox.org/trump-tells-troops-wants-new-space-force/feed/022010Microplastic Contamination Found In 93 Percent Of Major Brands’ Bottled Waterhttp://ofthebox.org/microplastic-contamination-found-93-percent-major-brands-bottled-water/
http://ofthebox.org/microplastic-contamination-found-93-percent-major-brands-bottled-water/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 10:18:33 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22006Plastic pollution stories often focus on the sheer prevalence of the problem in the oceans, and that’s fair enough: Right now, there’s about 17 Great Pyramids of Giza-worth of plastic in them, and it’s added to each year. A new report commissioned by journalism organization Orb Media, however, reminds us that plastic pollution isn’t a […]

]]>Plastic pollution stories often focus on the sheer prevalence of the problem in the oceans, and that’s fair enough: Right now, there’s about 17 Great Pyramids of Giza-worth of plastic in them, and it’s added to each year. A new report commissioned by journalism organization Orb Media, however, reminds us that plastic pollution isn’t a problem that we can avoid ourselves.

According to their analysis carried out in conjunction with the State University of New York in Fredonia, “93 percent of the bottled water tested showed some sign of microplastic contamination,” featuring polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate. This striking value was obtained by examining 259 bottles of water from 11 different brands, sold in nine different countries on five different continents.

Using an infrared microscope, the researchers found that, for particles around 0.1 millimeters in size, there’s roughly 10.4 per liter (2.3 gallons) of bottled water in various major brands. The report notes that this is “twice as much as within previous study on tap water.” This figure is just an average though, with some bottles containing very few and some containing magnitudes more.

The report also notes that far smaller particles were also identified using a dye that binds to plastic. Although present in far greater quantities – about 325 per liter – it isn’t clear that they are definitively plastic or not at this stage as their identity couldn’t be confirmed with the microscope.

Either way, “data suggests contamination is at least partially coming from the packaging and/or the bottling process itself,” the report explains. The brands affected include Nestle Pure Life, Dasani, Gerolsteiner, E-Pura, Evian, and Aquafina, to name just a few – again, with huge average microplastic variations across the board.

It’s important to point out, however, that this isn’t a peer-reviewed scientific study, but a report using scientific techniques. It is set to receive a technical review, but until then, it’s worth keeping that in mind.

Although plastic pollution in general is decidedly grim, the specific risks of microplastic ingestion on human health are highly uncertain at present because the phenomenon remains under-researched. As odd as it may sound, we simply don’t definitively know what the dangers of long-term plastic ingestion on humans may be, which is why the caution around the ubiquity of microplastics is certainly nothing but sensible.

Fortunately, shortly after the publication of this latest report, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that they are launching a review into the long-term risks of microplastics in drinking water.

Studies on marine ecosystems that are awash with microplastics are similarly unenlightened at present. They’re also trying to nail down the quantities of microplastics that are ingested, as well as comprehend what effects this will have on organisms’ health.

Although it’s certainly possible that underwater critters consuming microplastics may be at risk of toxicity, once again, far more work is required to understand how dangerous, or not, such microplastic particles are.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/microplastic-contamination-found-93-percent-major-brands-bottled-water/feed/022006Boaty McBoatface Survives Most Daring Mission Yethttp://ofthebox.org/boaty-mcboatface-survives-daring-mission-yet/
http://ofthebox.org/boaty-mcboatface-survives-daring-mission-yet/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 10:14:58 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=22002Boaty McBoatface, the bright yellow autonomous robotic submarine developed by the UK’s National Oceanography Center (NOC), has safely returned to its launch ship after traveling 108 kilometers (67 miles) under the almost 600-meter (1,970-foot) deep Filchner Ice Shelf (FIS). The 51-hour expedition, Boaty’s longest since it was first put to work in 2017, gathered data […]

]]>Boaty McBoatface, the bright yellow autonomous robotic submarine developed by the UK’s National Oceanography Center (NOC), has safely returned to its launch ship after traveling 108 kilometers (67 miles) under the almost 600-meter (1,970-foot) deep Filchner Ice Shelf (FIS).

The 51-hour expedition, Boaty’s longest since it was first put to work in 2017, gathered data on the water movement patterns, temperature, phytoplankton presence, and salinity under the 450,000-square-kilometer (173,745-square-mile) ice shelf that recently detached from Antarctica and now floats in the Weddell Sea.

Designed to accompany the state-of-the-art polar marine research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough when it is completed in 2019, Boaty’s latest real-world test was a collaboration between its NOC operators and researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the German Alfred Wegener Institute.

The group’s FIS Project seeks to understand how land and sea ice will respond to the water warming that is already occurring in other Antarctic regions. Slated for completion in 2020, the FIS Project will contribute to a climate projection model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Boaty and the crew were transported by the German ice-breaking research vessel RV Polarstern. According to project leader Dr Adrian Jenkins, the robotic sub – officially referred to as an Autosub Long Range (ALR) – had to be deployed more than 32 kilometers (20 miles) away from the edge of the FIS because an untenably thick swathe of sea ice blocked the Polarstern’s path.

An infographic of Boaty McBoatface’s recent expedition. Courtesy of NOC.

“I am delighted in the success of this mission. For the engineers involved, this was a very challenging deployment that was not without risk,” said lead developer Steve McPhail in a statement.

On top of below-freezing air temperatures and the constant formation of sea ice surrounding the ship during deployment and recovery, the conditions under the shelf were incredibly treacherous, with strong tidal currents that could knock the submersible off course.

And if the sub did get lost under the ice, the team wouldn’t have known, let alone been able to troubleshoot; the antsy team had no communication with the ALR for 90 percent of its time in the water. (Deep under GPS-blocking ice, Boaty navigates by comparing sonar readings to stored maps.)

Now that the sub has proved its mettle, the NOC team are excitedly planning longer data-gathering expeditions for it and its anticipated siblings – once operational, the RSS Attenborough will house a small fleet of ALRs. These vehicles are engineered to reach depths of 6,000 meters (19,700 feet) and operate for months without needing to re-dock with a surface ship.

“The reason this mission under the Filchner Ice Shelf in the Antarctic is so significant is that it proves the concept of the new Boaty long-range vehicle being able to do this kind of work,” Russell Wynn, chief robotics scientist for NOC, said to the BBC.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/boaty-mcboatface-survives-daring-mission-yet/feed/022002You Can Now Track Where Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster Is In Spacehttp://ofthebox.org/can-now-track-elon-musks-tesla-roadster-space/
http://ofthebox.org/can-now-track-elon-musks-tesla-roadster-space/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 10:11:27 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21999A website called Where Is Roadster is tracking Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster in space. The site, which is not affiliated with SpaceX, estimates the car is more than 2 million miles from Earth. Musk cheekily tweeted about the site on Sunday, saying his car “must be parked around here somewhere.” Earlier this month, SpaceX launched […]

]]>A website called Where Is Roadster is tracking Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster in space.

The site, which is not affiliated with SpaceX, estimates the car is more than 2 million miles from Earth.

Musk cheekily tweeted about the site on Sunday, saying his car “must be parked around here somewhere.”

Earlier this month, SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the world, that used Elon Musk’s very own Tesla Roadster as its payload.

For about 12 hours the Roadster, helmed by a spacesuit-wearing dummy dubbed “Starman,” broadcast live video footage as it soared through space. But eventually the electric car’s batteries ran out and so too did the footage.

But one website is allowing ordinary stargazers to track the car’s progress compared to the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

A link to the site, Where Is Roadster, was tweeted out by Musk on Sunday along with the tongue-in-cheek comment, “I’m sure it’s parked around here somewhere.”

Where Is Roadster was created by engineer Ben Pearson using data from NASA’s JPL Horizons.

At around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, the site put Musk’s car at 2.3 million miles from Earth, moving away at a speed of 6,747 miles/hour.

According to the calculations the Roadster has exceeded its 36,000 mile warranty more than 595 times.

While astronomers have been able to spot the car in the night sky, Pearson has created an animation to show what Earth and the Moon would look like if the car’s cameras were still broadcasting.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/can-now-track-elon-musks-tesla-roadster-space/feed/0219998 Things Science Says Predicts Divorcehttp://ofthebox.org/8-things-science-says-predicts-divorce/
http://ofthebox.org/8-things-science-says-predicts-divorce/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 10:05:59 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21994No one can say with 100% certainty that a couple is heading for disaster. But social scientists have gotten pretty good at predicting who’s most likely to wind up there. These couples share certain commonalities — in the way they fight and the way they describe their relationship, but also in their education level and […]

]]>No one can say with 100% certainty that a couple is heading for disaster.

But social scientists have gotten pretty good at predicting who’s most likely to wind up there. These couples share certain commonalities — in the way they fight and the way they describe their relationship, but also in their education level and employment status.

Below, Business Insider has rounded up seven factors that predict divorce.

Getting married in your teens or after age 32

The best time to get married is when you feel ready, and when you’ve found someone you think you can spend a lifetime with. Don’t force anything — or put it off — because a study told you to do so.

That said, research does suggest that couples who marry in their teens and couples who marry in their mid-30s or later are at greater risk for divorce than couples in their late 20s and early 30s. The risk is especially high for teenage couples.

That’s according to research led by Nicholas Wolfinger, a professor at the University of Utah. After age 32, Wolfinger found, your odds of divorce increase by about 5% every year.

As Wolfinger wrote in a blog post for the conservative-leaning Institute for Family Studies, “For almost everyone, the late twenties seems to be the best time to tie the knot.”

Other research, published in 2015 in the journal Economic Inquiry, found that the odds of divorce among heterosexual couples increase with the age gap between spouses.

“A one-year discrepancy in a couple’s ages, the study found, makes them 3% more likely to divorce (when compared to their same-aged counterparts); a 5-year difference, however, makes them 18% more likely to split up. And a 10-year difference makes them 39% more likely.”

Having a husband who doesn’t work full-time

A 2016 Harvard study, published in the American Sociological Review, suggests that it’s not a couple’s finances that affect their chances of divorce, but rather the division of labor.

When the researcher, Alexandra Killewald, looked at heterosexual marriages that began after 1975, she learned that couples in which the husband didn’t have a full-time job had a 3.3% chance of divorcing the following year, compared to 2.5% among couples in which the husband did have a full-time job.

Wives’ employment status, however, didn’t much affect the couple’s chances of divorce.

The researcher concludes that the male breadwinner stereotype is still very much alive, and can affect marital stability.

Not finishing high school

It doesn’t seem fair that couples who spend more time in school are less likely to get divorced. But that’s what the research suggests.

A post on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website highlights a result from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979), which looked at the marriage and divorce patterns of a group of young baby boomers. The post reads:

“The chance of a marriage ending in divorce was lower for people with more education, with over half of marriages of those who did not complete high school having ended in divorce compared with approximately 30 percent of marriages of college graduates.”

It may have to do with the fact that lower educational attainment predicts lower income — which in turn predicts a more stressful life. As psychologist Eli Finkel previously told Business Insider:

“What I think is going on is it’s really difficult to have a productive, happy marriage when your life circumstances are so stressful and when your day-to-day life involves, say three or four bus routes in order to get to your job.”

Showing contempt for your partner

Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of Washington and the founder of the Gottman Institute, calls certain relationship behaviors the “four horsemen of the apocalypse.” That’s because they predict divorce with scary-high accuracy:

1. Contempt: Seeing your partner as beneath you. (Gottman calls this behavior the “kiss of death” for a relationship.)

2. Criticism: Turning a behavior into a statement about your partner’s character.3. Defensiveness: Playing the victim during difficult situations.4. Stonewalling: Blocking off a conversation.

As Business Insider’s Erin Brodwin reported, these conclusions are based on a 14-year study of 79 couples living in the US Midwest, which Gottman conducted along with University of California-Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson. And while that particular study was small, another decade of research supports the findings.

Being overly affectionate as newlyweds

If you’re not inclined to hug and kiss and hold hands as newlyweds, that might be a problem. But if you practically have to be pulled apart, well, that might be a problem, too.

Psychologist Ted Huston followed 168 couples for 13 years — from their wedding day onward. Huston and his team conducted multiple interviews with the couples throughout the study.

Here’s one fascinating finding, from the resulting paper that was published in the journal Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes in 2001: “As newlyweds, the couples who divorced after 7 or more years were almost giddily affectionate, displaying about one third more affection than did spouses who were later happily married.”

Aviva Patz summed it up in Psychology Today: “[C]ouples whose marriages begin in romantic bliss are particularly divorce-prone because such intensity is too hard to maintain. Believe it or not, marriages that start out with less ‘Hollywood romance’ usually have more promising futures.”

Weathering daily stress

Don’t underestimate the toll that stress can take on a marriage.

A 2007 paper, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, looked at the factors that led to divorce in European couples and found that daily stress was an important reason behind the decision to divorce in many couples.

Seemingly trivial experiences like forgetting an appointment or missing the bus turned out to create tension between spouses.

The authors even found that “participants reported the accumulation of everyday stress as a more relevant divorce trigger than falling in love with another person, partner violence, or even a specific major life event that would have instigated changes in their private life.”

Withdrawing from conflict

When your partner tries to talk to you about something though, do you shut down? If so (or if your partner is guilty of that behavior), that’s not a great sign.

A 2013 study, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, found that husbands’ “withdrawal” behaviors predicted higher divorce rates. This conclusion was based on the researchers’ interviews with about 350 newlywed couples living in Michigan.

Meanwhile, a 2013 study, published in the journal Communication Monographs, suggests that couples engaged in “demand/withdraw” patterns — i.e. one partner pressuring the other and receiving silence in return — are less happy in their relationships.

The lead study author, Paul Schrodt at Texas Christian University, says it’s a hard pattern to break because each partner thinks the other is the cause of the problem. It requires seeing how your individual behaviors are contributing to the issue and using different, more respectful conflict-management strategies.

Describing your relationship in a negative way

In 1992, Gottman and other researchers at the University of Washington developed a procedure called the “oral history interview,” in which they ask couples to talk about different aspects of their relationship. By analyzing the conversations, the researchers are able to predict which couples are heading for divorce.

In one study, published in 2000 in the Journal of Family Psychology, Gottman and colleagues put 95 newlywed couples through the oral history interview. Results showed that couples’ scores on certain measures predicted the strength or weakness of their marriage. Those measures included:

Fondness for each other

“We”-ness: How much each spouse emphasizes unification in the marriage

Expansiveness: How much each partner elaborates on what the other is saying

]]>http://ofthebox.org/8-things-science-says-predicts-divorce/feed/021994This FDA Approved Drug Could Permanently Repair Brain Damage in Stroke Victimshttp://ofthebox.org/fda-approved-drug-permanently-repair-brain-damage-stroke-victims-2/
http://ofthebox.org/fda-approved-drug-permanently-repair-brain-damage-stroke-victims-2/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 09:57:12 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21991OLD DRUG, NEW TREATMENT Researchers from the University of Manchester have developed a new treatment that could limit the damage caused by strokes and also promote repair in the affected area of the brain. What’s more, the drug they’re using has already been clinically approved. The researchers’ study is published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity, […]

Researchers from the University of Manchester have developed a new treatment that could limit the damage caused by strokes and also promote repair in the affected area of the brain. What’s more, the drug they’re using has already been clinically approved.

The researchers’ study is published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity, and it recounts how they developed their treatment using mice bred to develop ischemic strokes, the most prevalent type of stroke and one that occurs when an artery that supplies oxygen-rich blood to the brain is blocked. Soon after the mice experienced a stroke, the researchers treated them with interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra), an anti-inflammatory drug that is already licensed for use in treating rheumatoid arthritis.

They noticed a reduction in the amount of brain damage typically observed after a stroke and also noted that the drug boosted neurogenesis (the birth of new cells) in the areas that did experience brain damage in the days following the treatment. The mice even regained the motor skills they lost due to the stroke.

HOPE FOR A CURE

Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States and about 800,000 people suffer from one each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They occur when the flow of blood to the brain is interrupted, usually due to a blood clot or a buildup of fat that broke off from the arteries and traveled to the brain. The condition is extremely dangerous because brain cells can die within a few minutes of the stroke, causing permanent damage or even death.

We still don’t have a treatment to adequately prevent or reverse the damage to the brain caused by strokes, but the Manchester researchers believe that their development could change that. Though they are still in early stages of clinical trials, they hope to eventually move on to larger trials and eventually human testing. Together with other research, this new study offers hope to the thousands of people whose lives are impacted by strokes worldwide.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/fda-approved-drug-permanently-repair-brain-damage-stroke-victims-2/feed/021991New Zealand May Soon Get a Flying Taxi Servicehttp://ofthebox.org/new-zealand-may-soon-get-flying-taxi-service/
http://ofthebox.org/new-zealand-may-soon-get-flying-taxi-service/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 08:02:39 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21988In New Zealand, no one cares if you can’t fly. The nation is home to many flightless birds, such as the kea and the ultra-rare yellow-eyed penguin. In fact, if you can’t fly in New Zealand, you might even make it onto the nation’s money — just look at the kiwi, the country’s pride and […]

]]>In New Zealand, no one cares if you can’t fly. The nation is home to many flightless birds, such as the kea and the ultra-rare yellow-eyed penguin. In fact, if you can’t fly in New Zealand, you might even make it onto the nation’s money — just look at the kiwi, the country’s pride and joy.

So how, then, will the island nation take to taxis that fly?

We might soon find out. In April of 2017, Kitty Hawk, the flying car company backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, released the first footage of a prototype in action. Now, it seems that a finalized version of a flying automobile is taking to the skies. The New York Times reports that Kitty Hawk has been conducting “stealth test flights” in New Zealand over the last few months. On March 13, Kitty Hawk unveiled the vehicle’s prototype to the world, alongside official flight footage.

Here’s what we know: this vehicle will sit well with environmental activists, as it’s fully electric. (Kitty Hawk asserts that the vehicle is just the latest addition to the ongoing “electric revolution.”) The vehicle is optimized for shorter, city-to-city flights, with a range of 100 km (62 mi) and a maximum speed of about 150 km/h (95 mph). To operate it, you won’t need a runway, as it can take off and land vertically. Of course, you won’t actually be operating it at all, because the vehicle is self-piloting.

The company calls it Cora, and they note that it’s meant to be much more than just a flying car — it’s a flying taxi.

In the press release, Kitty Hawk said that they are working with the New Zealand government to commercialize the flying taxi. The duo are aiming to see a commercial network of air taxis soaring above the cities of New Zealand in as little as three years.

Of course, Kitty Hawk isn’t the only company taking to the skies. Uber has been working to develop a flying version of its famous ride-sharing service since at least 2016, in a project called Uber Elevate. In a white paper, Uber outlined their vision to provide “quicker daily commutes, less traffic congestion, and cleaner air around the world.” Specifically, their aim is to provide super-fast city-to-city access through their flying taxi service. And the plan to do it in as little as ten years.

Like Kitty Hawk, Uber’s flying cars will take off and land vertically, and they estimate that their “on demand aviation” could cut travel time by more than half. However, Uber is also planning to operate in a country with a much more crowded airspace than Kitty Hawk is working with, and likely a much slower path to new regulations through the U.S.’s Federal Aviation Administration.

We’re not entirely convinced that we’ll really see cars flying through the skies, as accidents involving two tons of falling steel would likely throw our infrastructure into chaos. But Uber and Google have already disrupted the way we travel in monumental ways. Perhaps they can do it again.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/new-zealand-may-soon-get-flying-taxi-service/feed/021988Growing New Veins Could Make Life Better for People on Dialysishttp://ofthebox.org/growing-new-veins-make-life-better-people-dialysis/
http://ofthebox.org/growing-new-veins-make-life-better-people-dialysis/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 07:59:33 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21985The journey awaiting kidney patients in need of a transplant is often long and painful, and can lead to weekly stints undergoing uncomfortable dialysis treatment. A new device, which helps patients grow new veins that make it easier to filter the blood, could mean the world to those who have to endure the procedure every […]

]]>The journey awaiting kidney patients in need of a transplant is often long and painful, and can lead to weekly stints undergoing uncomfortable dialysis treatment. A new device, which helps patients grow new veins that make it easier to filter the blood, could mean the world to those who have to endure the procedure every few days for months or even years.

As kidneys fail, they stop cleaning the blood from the impurities that the body normally gets rid of via urine. Although kidney disease can sometimes have few symptoms, it can be fatal, unless doctors intervene and perform the kidneys’ job outside the body, through the process known as dialysis. During dialysis, patients have their blood pulled out, purified and put back in on a regular basis. The tedious procedure keeps them alive as they wait for a transplant, but it has some serious side effects, including damage to the veins.

Long-term dialysis users have a plastic tube implanted into their arm to facilitate the removal and injection of blood, because human veins are too fragile to endure the procedure every week for a long time. The tiny plastic tubes are meant to protect the veins while also making it easier to extract the blood.

However, “when you leave plastic implants in the body, they tend to occlude [block] quite easily,” explained Silvére Lucquin, CEO of the company Aditlys, to Engadget. His company’s research indicates that these blockages occur in 50 percent of patients within the first year of therapy. For this reason, Aditlys wants to equip patients to better cope with prolonged periods of dialysis, by helping them grow blood vessels that connect more easily to the machine.

They plan to do so by installing a hollow artificial implant into a patient’s veins. Over time, this polymer-based vessel will supports the growth of new tissue that shapes around it. While the implant slowly dissolves, the new veins will form a natural link for the dialysis tube.

Compared with a plastic implant permanently stuck in the arm, the natural junction protects patients from the infections that are very common in this type of procedure. Aditlys plans to use a combination of advanced medical technologies, building on a process of endogenous tissue restoration introduced by a company called Xeltis. While Xeltis mainly worked on restoring heart valves, Lucquin and his team will be focusing on blood vessels.

The idea is still in its early stages, and it still has a long way to go before hitting the market. Yet given that one in three American adults risk getting kidney disease at some point, every improvement that can make their life easier has the potential to make a massive impact.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/growing-new-veins-make-life-better-people-dialysis/feed/021985A Cheap, Portable Skin Cancer Detector Has Won the Dyson Awardhttp://ofthebox.org/cheap-portable-skin-cancer-detector-won-dyson-award/
http://ofthebox.org/cheap-portable-skin-cancer-detector-won-dyson-award/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 07:57:16 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21981MEET SKAN Detecting skin cancer early isn’t easy. Currently, it’s done through visual inspections or biopsies, but some doctors may not pick up on the disease using the former, while some patients may not be able to afford the latter. As such, a team of graduates from McMaster University in Canada set out to develop […]

Detecting skin cancer early isn’t easy. Currently, it’s done through visual inspections or biopsies, but some doctors may not pick up on the disease using the former, while some patients may not be able to afford the latter. As such, a team of graduates from McMaster University in Canada set out to develop an inexpensive skin cancer detector, and their innovative work has earned them the prestigious international James Dyson Award.

Cancer affects the metabolic rate of skin cells, with cancerous cells heating up faster than their healthy counterparts following a shock of cold temperature.

To make identifying these cells easier, the McMaster University team — Michael Takla, Rotimi Fadiya, Prateek Mathur, and Shivad Bhavsar — built a skin cancer detector with 16 thermistors that can track the rate of temperature increase following a cold shock from an ice pack.

The thermistors are simply placed on the potentially cancerous area of skin, and the device produces a heat map that can be used to determine the presence of melanoma.

“By using widely available and inexpensive components, the sKan allows for melanoma skin cancer detection to be readily accessible to the many” award founder James Dyson said in a statement announcing the win. “It’s a very clever device with the potential to save lives around the world.”

In addition to winning the Dyson Award for their skin cancer detector, the team also received a cash prize of approximately $40,000 to advance their research. They received $10,000 at the the Forge’s Student Start-up Pitch competition in March.

DIAGNOSING SKIN CANCER

According to Mathur, the team was inspired to create sKan after realizing technology hadn’t had the same impact on skin cancer diagnosis as it had in other medical fields.

“We found research that used the thermal properties of cancerous skin tissue as a means of detecting melanoma. However, this was done using expensive lab equipment,” he said in a McMaster University news release. “We set out to apply the research and invent a way of performing the same assessment using a more cost-effective solution.”

Going forward, the sKan team hopes to create a more advanced prototype that will allow them to begin pre-clinical testing.

Image Credit: James Dyson Awards

As reported by The Guardian, nearly 39 people are diagnosed with skin cancer every day in the U.K., and the American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates 87,110 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in the U.S. 2017, with 9,730 people dying from the condition. Early detection is key to cancer survival, so if sKan succeeds, it could significantly reduce that number.

“Our aspirations have become a reality,” said Mathur. “Skin cancers are the most common form of cancer worldwide, and the potential to positively impact the lives of those affected is both humbling and motivating.”

]]>http://ofthebox.org/cheap-portable-skin-cancer-detector-won-dyson-award/feed/021981This Startup Will Literally Kill You for Sciencehttp://ofthebox.org/startup-will-literally-kill-science/
http://ofthebox.org/startup-will-literally-kill-science/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:52:26 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21978One new startup promises to kill all of its users. With support from the startup accelerator Y Combinator, Nectome wants to preserve your brain and upload as much of “you” as they can, long after your physical body is gone. Their website boldly asks: “What if we told you we could back up your mind?” […]

]]>One new startup promises to kill all of its users. With support from the startup accelerator Y Combinator, Nectome wants to preserve your brain and upload as much of “you” as they can, long after your physical body is gone. Their website boldly asks: “What if we told you we could back up your mind?”

The main premise behind Nectome is simple, but the execution might be tricky. In theory, the startup will use a specially-designed chemical solution to preserve a body for hundreds of years. They aim to preserve the human brain well enough to keep its memories intact. They operate, however, only on the faith that within this century it will be possible to digitize and download a person’s memories and recreate their consciousness.

They have so far successfully used their solution to preserve the connectome, which encompasses all of the neural connections, in a rabbits’ brain, and they hope that humans may be next.

Cool, right? Actually, there’s a catch. As Robert McIntyre, Nectome’s co-founder, clarified to Technology Review, their technique is “100 percent fatal.” Nectome is excited that their unique work sets them apart, but no matter how groundbreaking your scientific achievements are, you can’t just go around killing people.

To get around this tricky issue, the company is working with lawyers familiar with California’s two-year-old End of Life Option Act which allows terminally ill patients to choose to end their lives with medical assistance. They believe that were they allowed to do so, many of those suffering from terminal illnesses would welcome the chance to take advantage of Nectome’s preservation technique.

Volunteers would be connected to a heart-lung machine and put under general anesthesia. They would then have the company’s chemical solution pumped into large arteries in their necks. They would be alive for the procedure, but not for long.

This procedure might seem terrifying, but the startup already has a waiting list. It is impossible to say whether or not Nectome’s efforts will eventually succeed, as they are working off of the assumption that scientists will figure out how to digitize consciousness at some point in the future. Still, people who signed up for the “service” clearly hope that after death they may one day “wake up” as a version of themselves in a new, digital life.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/startup-will-literally-kill-science/feed/021978You’re Probably Drinking Microplastics With Your Bottled Waterhttp://ofthebox.org/youre-probably-drinking-microplastics-bottled-water/
http://ofthebox.org/youre-probably-drinking-microplastics-bottled-water/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:50:02 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21976You already know how bad plastic bottles are for the planet. We go through a million of them per minute and are generally terrible at recycling. As a result, bottles join other plastic waste in clogging up waterways, harming wildlife and accumulating in delicate ecosystems. Now we know this plastic use is probably not too […]

]]>You already know how bad plastic bottles are for the planet. We go through a million of them per minute and are generally terrible at recycling. As a result, bottles join other plastic waste in clogging up waterways, harming wildlife and accumulating in delicate ecosystems.

Now we know this plastic use is probably not too good for us, either. In fact, taking a sip of bottled water might come with more than you bargained for.

The water sold in plastic bottles contains microplastics at levels that might endanger human health, according to a recent study. As a result, the World Health Organization plans to investigate the potential health risks of ingesting plastic, the BBC reports.

Microplastics are pieces of plastic that have broken down a size smaller than a fingernail. About 275,000 metric tons of the stuff enter our waterways each year, according to some estimates.

In the study, which has not been published in a scientific journal and was commissioned by journalistic outlet Orb Media, researchers at State University of New York at Fredonia tested water from 259 bottles produced by 11 different companies and purchased in nine countries. They dropped a red dye into the bottles because the dye sticks to the plastics, differentiating them from the water in which they float. The scientists counted an average of 10.4 plastic particles per liter. Some bottles had no plastic in them at all. In a liter of Nestle Pure Life, there were 10,000.

The findings suggest that a person who drinks a liter of bottled water a day — half of what the average person needs every day — might be consuming tens of thousands of microplastic particles each year, the Orb Media article notes.

We don’t yet know how microplastics affect our health, but there’s reason to think that their buildup in our systems wouldn’t be good for us. We already know that when microplastics build up in animals like fish, they affect their behavior and alter their hormones. Some chemicals in plastic are known to have similar effects on humans.

If you’re shocked that there’s plastic in your water, well, you haven’t been paying attention. A previous investigation by Orb Media found that 83 percent of tap water samples contained microplastics. The shocking thing about this study? The amount of microplastic found in plastic bottles was double what scientists found in tap water.

It’s difficult to imagine a solution that would take care of the problem completely. Municipalities and companies could better filter water before it flows into taps and plastic bottles. But even if we did that, we would still have discarded plastic bottles breaking down into microplastics in water everywhere — not to mention lots of other plastic products. Better filtration would just be a temporary solution to a much larger problem. People, along with the ecosystems in which they live and the animals that live there with them, would probably be better off if governments banned plastics altogether.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/youre-probably-drinking-microplastics-bottled-water/feed/021976IBM’s New, Cutting Edge Tech Could Make Computers 200 Times Fasterhttp://ofthebox.org/ibms-new-cutting-edge-tech-make-computers-200-times-faster/
http://ofthebox.org/ibms-new-cutting-edge-tech-make-computers-200-times-faster/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:46:12 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21971An All-in-One Approach to Computing Regular desktop computers, as well as laptops and smartphones, have processing units dedicated to computing and memory. They’re called von Neumann systems and are named after physicist and computer scientist John von Neumann who, among other things, was a pioneer in modern digital computing. They work by moving data back […]

Regular desktop computers, as well as laptops and smartphones, have processing units dedicated to computing and memory. They’re called von Neumann systems and are named after physicist and computer scientist John von Neumann who, among other things, was a pioneer in modern digital computing. They work by moving data back and forth between the memory and computing unit; a process that can, and often does, end up being slow and not very efficient.

At least, not as fast or efficient as what we could achieve using “computational memory.” Also known as “in-memory computing,” computational memory allows for storing and processing information using just the physical properties of a computer system’s memory.

A team from IBM Research claims to have made a breakthrough in computational memory by successfully using one million phase change memory (PCM) devices to run an unsupervised machine learning algorithm. Details of the research have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The IBM team’s PCM device was made from a germanium antimony telluride alloy stacked and sandwiched between two electrodes. “[T]his prototype technology is expected to yield 200x improvements in both speed and energy efficiency, making it highly suitable for enabling ultra-dense, low-power, and massively-parallel computing systems for applications in AI,” according to a post on IBM Research’s blog.

Fit for AI

The new PCM devices can perform computation in place through crystallization dynamics. Essentially, this involves an electrical current being applied to the PCM’s material, which changes its state from one of a disordered atomic arrangement to an ordered configuration — i.e. crystalline. The IBM team demonstrated their PCM technology using two time-based examples, which they then compared to traditional machine-learning methods.

The ability to perform computations faster will, obviously, benefit over all computer performance. For IBM, that means better computing power for AI applications. “This is an important step forward in our research of the physics of AI, which explores new hardware materials, devices and architectures,” IBM Fellow and co-author of the study Evangelos Eleftheriou said in a statement quoted in the blog.

“As the [Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor or CMOS] scaling laws break down because of technological limits, a radical departure from the processor-memory dichotomy is needed to circumvent the limitations of today’s computers. Given the simplicity, high speed and low energy of our in-memory computing approach, it’s remarkable that our results are so similar to our benchmark classical approach run on a von Neumann computer.”

Computational memory presents an opportunity for a more “real-time” processing of information; a much-needed improvement in today’s world, where more companies are putting a premium on data analytics. At the same time, as industry giants like Amazon and Google place AI at the center of their business, faster computing for AI applications is indeed a welcomed development.

For IBM, in-memory computing is key. “Memory has so far been viewed as a place where we merely store information. But in this work, we conclusively show how we can exploit the physics of these memory devices to also perform a rather high-level computational primitive,” lead author Abu Sebastian said. “The result of the computation is also stored in the memory devices, and in this sense the concept is loosely inspired by how the brain computes.”

]]>http://ofthebox.org/ibms-new-cutting-edge-tech-make-computers-200-times-faster/feed/021971First Results of a Clinical Trial to “Cure Aging” Using Young Blood Just Came inhttp://ofthebox.org/first-results-clinical-trial-cure-aging-using-young-blood-just-came/
http://ofthebox.org/first-results-clinical-trial-cure-aging-using-young-blood-just-came/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:43:43 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21968Young Blood The results of a study investigating whether blood plasma taken from young people can reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease are in. Unfortunately, it seems that the technique doesn’t hold as much potential as many had hoped, yet the scientists behind the work are quick to note that the research is still in […]

The results of a study investigating whether blood plasma taken from young people can reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease are in. Unfortunately, it seems that the technique doesn’t hold as much potential as many had hoped, yet the scientists behind the work are quick to note that the research is still in its nascent stages.

Within this study, a group of elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease were given weekly injections of blood plasma from people aged between 18 and 25. But, while some improvements were recorded, the effects of the treatment were not significantly pronounced.

The participants of the study did not perform better on objective cognitive tests taken after the had received injections for an extended period of time. However, a survey of caregivers indicated that there were improvements in terms of their ability to carry out everyday tasks like preparing food or traveling.

The idea of injecting plasma to combat the effects of aging comes from a 19th-century concept that’s now referred to as parabiosis. In its earliest iteration, the skin of old and young mice was stitched together to allow blood to circulate freely between the two animals.

In recent years, the technique has been revisited, and it was demonstrated to revitalize the liver, brain, and muscles of older mice. This prompted a search for the molecules that were causing these improvements.

Peer Review

Doubt has been cast on this study because of the way that the treatment’s effectiveness was tested. Initially, one group of patients was set to be given a saline placebo, and another would be injected with plasma. After several weeks, they would switch – but this plan was thrown out after several participants dropped out.

Instead, the remaining participants were all given plasma for four weeks, and this was compared to the placebo effect from the first study. Between the study results and the fact that caregivers might be predisposed to observe improvements where there are none, it’s being argued that the study is far from conclusive.

Alkahest, the technology company that bankrolled the study, finds the results encouraging. Further trials are set to be carried out to determine whether or not the treatment is at all viable.

Another study will take this a step further and only use the part of blood plasma that contains growth factors, which has proven to be more effective in animal testing. There are also early plans to test a larger number of Alzheimer’s sufferers, including people with a more severe form of the condition, with a variety of different dosages.

There are still questions that need to be answered before we know how effective plasma injections really are. Despite this and the inconclusive and seemingly ineffectual results, the procedure is already being offered commercially, with prices as high as $8,000 for a two-day course of treatment.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/first-results-clinical-trial-cure-aging-using-young-blood-just-came/feed/021968After 150 Years, the Weight of a Kilogram May Be Changinghttp://ofthebox.org/150-years-weight-kilogram-may-changing-2/
http://ofthebox.org/150-years-weight-kilogram-may-changing-2/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:41:10 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21964LITTLE WEIGHT, LITTLE CHANGE From being used in science experiments to weighing everyday objects, the kilogram has been a useful unit of measurement that has remained unchanged for more than a century now. That run could be coming to an end as it and six other base units of measurements are poised to get updated […]

From being used in science experiments to weighing everyday objects, the kilogram has been a useful unit of measurement that has remained unchanged for more than a century now. That run could be coming to an end as it and six other base units of measurements are poised to get updated by the International Committee for Weight and Measurements in 2018.

Currently, all seven of the basic units of measurement except the kilogram are based on constant values observed in nature. The kilogram is defined by a physical object called the International Prototype Kilogram. The object, which is kept in a vault in France, has become heavier as of late due to surface contamination. This is a headache for a lot of people, particularly scientists that rely on a constant kilogram for their scientific assumptions.

The new proposal would be to base the kilogram on what is known as Planck’s constant, a value that relates a particle’s energy to its frequency. Scientists have just recently agreed on that value, but they have until July 1, 2017 to publish data that challenges it.

The units ampere, mole, and kelvin are also expected to change. Under the new proposal, the ampere would be based on the elementary charge of an electron, the kelvin would be based on the Boltzmann constant, and the mole would be based on the Avogadro’s constant.

A SMALLER MARGIN FOR ERROR

The proposed changes are a result of a better understanding of our universe. As we discover of all these constants in nature, we can push forward with our scientific developments, and existing units of measurement are no longer as accurate as they could be.

While these tiny changes in the metric system are very unlikely to affect the average person, they would give scientists a measuring standard that is as solid a foundation as possible on which to base their research. After all, the fundamental forces of the universe aren’t changing.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/150-years-weight-kilogram-may-changing-2/feed/021964Lamborghini’s New Concept Electric Car is Energy Storage On Wheelshttp://ofthebox.org/lamborghinis-new-concept-electric-car-energy-storage-wheels/
http://ofthebox.org/lamborghinis-new-concept-electric-car-energy-storage-wheels/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:36:25 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21961At Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) EmTech conference last week, Italian luxury car manufacturer Lamborghini unveiled a new concept electric supercar — and they weren’t kidding when they called it “the future of sports cars.” The Lamborghini Terzo Millennio (which is Italian for the “third millennium”) certainly does look like it belongs to a future […]

]]>At Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) EmTech conference last week, Italian luxury car manufacturer Lamborghini unveiled a new concept electric supercar — and they weren’t kidding when they called it “the future of sports cars.”

The Lamborghini Terzo Millennio (which is Italian for the “third millennium”) certainly does look like it belongs to a future era. The product of a unique collaboration between MIT and Lamborghini, the Terzo Millennio doesn’t just look the part of a futuristic car, it’s packed with next-generation technology.

One of the highlights is its energy storage capacity. According to Road Show, the Terzo Millennio uses supercapacitors instead of regular batteries. Coupled with high storage capabilities, supercapacitors are also capable of receiving and delivering a charge faster than standard batteries. Plus, it carries more charge cycles than most batteries, which can supply power to the supercar’s four electric motors — one for each wheel.

Its energy storage capabilities don’t end there, though. The car’s carbon fiber body allows the entire vehicle to work as one big energy storage medium — almost like a battery on wheels.

“If I have a super sports car and I want to go the [race track], I want to go one, two, three laps without having to stop and recharge after every lap,” Mauricio Reggiani, head of R&D at Lamborghini, told CNN.

While promising, the car’s design does present certain challenges which could take years for Lamborghini to overcome. If they do, though, the Terzo Millennio would certainly be a sleek new offering in the competitive EV market.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/lamborghinis-new-concept-electric-car-energy-storage-wheels/feed/021961New Particles May “Signal the Breaking Point of the Standard Model”http://ofthebox.org/new-particles-may-signal-breaking-point-standard-model/
http://ofthebox.org/new-particles-may-signal-breaking-point-standard-model/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:33:02 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21958ANOMALOUS DECAYS Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest particle accelerator today, built underground in an area that straddles France and Switzerland. It’s purpose is to analyze the simplest particles in existence in an attempt to understand how the universe works. One of the experiments […]

Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest particle accelerator today, built underground in an area that straddles France and Switzerland. It’s purpose is to analyze the simplest particles in existence in an attempt to understand how the universe works.

One of the experiments currently being conducted at the LHC is called the LHCb, which is exploring what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter “to survive and build the Universe we inhabit today.” While the LHCb experiment got off to a good start, according to two University of Cambridge theoretical physicists working at CERN, there’s something anomalous going on.

“Using proton collisions from the LHC, LHCb has been carefully measuring the production of bottom mesons and how often they decay to kaon and muon particles,” Ben Allanach and Trevong You wrote in an article for The Guardian. “It looks like the answer is: not nearly often enough! In fact, this decay occurs at only about three-quarters of the frequency predicted by the Standard Model.”

CHALLENGING THE STANDARD MODEL
Particle decay is a process by which an unstable subatomic particle multiples into several other particles. Not all particles decay, but those that can do so at a rate that subscribes to the Standard Model. Data from the LHCb suggests that so-called bottom mesons don’t decay at that expected frequency. Allanach and You explained that such irregularity could be due to statistical fluctuations, although it’s extremely unlikely in this case.

“If this isn’t just bad luck, it could be an opportunity. Deep within the bottom mesons, quantum excitations of new particles could be at work, making the bottom mesons decay with the wrong frequency,” the pair wrote. These new particles, they believe, could either be “leptoquarks”— a hybrid between leptons and quarks — or what’s known as “Z primes.”

Further study and additional data is needed to confirm these new particles — if they truly exist. Data from the LHCb experiment might shed some light on the anomalies once an analysis is finished, about a year from now. To confirm the findings, Allanach and You pointed out, we need new high energy colliders.

If confirmed, these new particles could signal the breaking point of the Standard Model, which other physicists have long considered to be inadequate to explain the physics of the universe. While the LHC and efforts similar to it have greatly contributed to our understanding of matter, as the pair wrote, higher energy colliders are needed to find out “what lurks beyond the Standard Model.”

]]>http://ofthebox.org/new-particles-may-signal-breaking-point-standard-model/feed/021958Elon Musk Claims We Only Have a 10 Percent Chance of Making AI Safehttp://ofthebox.org/elon-musk-claims-10-percent-chance-making-ai-safe/
http://ofthebox.org/elon-musk-claims-10-percent-chance-making-ai-safe/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:29:03 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21955Outlook Not So Good Elon Musk has put a lot of thought into the harsh realities and wild possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI). These considerations have left him convinced that we need to merge with machines if we’re to survive, and he’s even created a startup dedicated to developing the brain-computer interface (BCI) technology needed […]

Elon Musk has put a lot of thought into the harsh realities and wild possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI). These considerations have left him convinced that we need to merge with machines if we’re to survive, and he’s even created a startup dedicated to developing the brain-computer interface (BCI) technology needed to make that happen. But despite the fact that his very own lab, OpenAI, has created an AI capable of teaching itself, Musk recently said that efforts to make AI safe only have “a five to 10 percent chance of success.”

Musk shared these less-than-stellar odds with the staff at Neuralink, the aforementioned BCI startup, according to recent Rolling Stone article. Despite Musk’s heavy involvement in the advancement of AI, he’s openly acknowledged that the technology brings with it not only the potential for, but the promise of serious problems.

The challenges to making AI safe are twofold.

First, a major goal of AI — and one that OpenAI is already pursuing — is building AI that’s not only smarter than humans, but that is capable of learning independently, without any human programming or interference. Where that ability could take it is unknown.

Then there is the fact that machines do not have morals, remorse, or emotions. Future AI might be capable of distinguishing between “good” and “bad” actions, but distinctly human feelings remain just that — human.

In the Rolling Stone article, Musk further elaborated on the dangers and problems that currently exist with AI, one of which is the potential for just a few companies to essentially control the AI sector. He cited Google’s DeepMind as a prime example.

“Between Facebook, Google, and Amazon — and arguably Apple, but they seem to care about privacy — they have more information about you than you can remember,” said Musk. “There’s a lot of risk in concentration of power. So if AGI [artificial general intelligence] represents an extreme level of power, should that be controlled by a few people at Google with no oversight?”

Worth the Risk?

Experts are divided on Musk’s assertion that we probably can’t make AI safe. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said he’s optimistic about humanity’s future with AI, calling Musk’s warnings “pretty irresponsible.” Meanwhile, Stephen Hawking has made public statements wholeheartedly expressing his belief that AI systems pose enough of a risk to humanity that they may replace us altogether.

Sergey Nikolenko, a Russian computer scientist who specializes in machine learning and network algorithms, recently shared his thoughts on the matter with Futurism. “I feel that we are still lacking the necessary basic understanding and methodology to achieve serious results on strong AI, the AI alignment problem, and other related problems,” said Nikolenko.

As for today’s AI, he thinks we have nothing to worry about. “I can bet any money that modern neural networks will not suddenly wake up and decide to overthrow their human overlord,” said Nikolenko.

Musk himself might agree with that, but his sentiments are likely more focused on how future AI may build on what we have today.

Already, we have AI systems capable of creating AI systems, ones that can communicate in their own languages, and ones that are naturally curious. While the singularity and a robot uprising are strictly science fiction tropes today, such AI progress makes them seem like genuine possibilities for the world of tomorrow.

But these fears aren’t necessarily enough reason to stop moving forward. We also have AIs that can diagnose cancer, identify suicidal behavior, and help stop sex trafficking.

The technology has the potential to save and improve lives globally, so while we must consider ways to make AI safe through future regulation, Musk’s words of warning are, ultimately, just one man’s opinion.

He even said as much himself to Rolling Stone: “I don’t have all the answers. Let me be really clear about that. I’m trying to figure out the set of actions I can take that are more likely to result in a good future. If you have suggestions in that regard, please tell me what they are.”

]]>http://ofthebox.org/elon-musk-claims-10-percent-chance-making-ai-safe/feed/021955Experts Say Some Organisms Thrive in Martian Soilhttp://ofthebox.org/experts-say-organisms-thrive-martian-soil/
http://ofthebox.org/experts-say-organisms-thrive-martian-soil/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:17:05 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21951Simulated Soil If we’re ever to establish a permanent base on Mars — and survive there — we’ll need to learn how to farm on the Red Planet before we make solid plans to relocate. To that end, scientists have already started experimenting with simulated Martian soil developed by NASA. The soil simulant was created […]

If we’re ever to establish a permanent base on Mars — and survive there — we’ll need to learn how to farm on the Red Planet before we make solid plans to relocate. To that end, scientists have already started experimenting with simulated Martian soil developed by NASA.

The soil simulant was created using data collected by Mars rovers and orbiters and is said to be as close to the real thing as possible, given the information that’s currently available. Since the soil doesn’t contain any organic material, it technically wouldn’t be classified as soil down here on Earth. Scientists are referring to it as such in order to distinguish it from the rocks and gravel present in the Martian regolith.

The study involved introducing rucola plants (better known as arugula), manure fertilizer, and earthworms to the soil sample. The worms took to their new environment so well that they actually began to reproduce before the experiment came to an end.

“Clearly the manure stimulated growth, especially in the Mars soil simulant, and we saw that the worms were active,” commented lead researcher Wieger Wamelink, according to a report from Science Daily. “However, the best surprise came at the end of the experiment when we found two young worms in the Mars soil simulant.”

Growing Up

NASA’s soil simulant has many potential uses, including tests designed to determine if matter on the surface of Mars will interfere with equipment — like planetary rovers and space suits. It’s also proving to be an integral part of ongoing efforts over the last few years to determine the Red Planet’s capacity for growing crops.

Rather than sending massive amounts of food along with Martian explorers, it makes more sense to give them a method of producing supplies once they’re up there. If a crew could grow crops on the surface of Mars, it would help solve one of the biggest issues preventing such an expedition from getting off the ground.

Wamelink and his team conducted a study back in 2016 that proved vegetables can be grown in the Martian soil simulant. Now, it’s a matter of improving upon the process — as it’s still not quite as effective as the soil we find on Earth, and therefore couldn’t be expected to sustain the needs of human crewmembers.

The fact that earthworms are apparently able to thrive in Martian soil is good news, as the worms would be of useful service when it comes to growing crops. The creatures digest decaying plant matter and turn it into nutrients, as well as aerate the soil as they tunnel through it.

However, there are still several other obstacles that still need to be overcome: the planet’s freezing-cold conditions, its surface radiation, and the fact that it only gets 60 percent of the light that Earth does, which would slow the growth of any plants.

In addition to those challenges, Wamelink and his team will next set out to study how the large quantities of a chlorine compound called perchlorate found on Mars could affect any vegetables grown there.

]]>http://ofthebox.org/experts-say-organisms-thrive-martian-soil/feed/021951Measurements From CERN Suggest the Possibility of a New Physicshttp://ofthebox.org/measurements-cern-suggest-possibility-new-physics/
http://ofthebox.org/measurements-cern-suggest-possibility-new-physics/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 18:12:24 +0000http://ofthebox.org/?p=21945A New Quantum Physics? During the mid- to late-twentieth century, quantum physicists picked apart the unified theory of physics that Einstein’s theory of relativity offered. The physics of the large was governed by gravity, but only quantum physics could describe observations of the small. Since then, a theoretical tug-o-war between gravity and the other three […]

During the mid- to late-twentieth century, quantum physicists picked apart the unified theory of physics that Einstein’s theory of relativity offered. The physics of the large was governed by gravity, but only quantum physics could describe observations of the small. Since then, a theoretical tug-o-war between gravity and the other three fundamental forces has continued as physicists try to extend gravity or quantum physics to subsume the other as more fundamental.

Recent measurements from the Large Hadron Collider show a discrepancy with Standard Model predictions that may hint at entirely new realms of the universe underlying what’s described by quantum physics. Although repeated tests are required to confirm these anomalies, a confirmation would signify a turning point in our most fundamental description of particle physics to date.

Quantum physicists found in a recent study that mesons don’t decay into kaon and muon particles often enough, according to the Standard Model predictions of frequency. The authors agree that enhancing the power of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will reveal a new kind of particle responsible for this discrepancy. Although errors in data or theory may have caused the discrepancy, instead of a new particle, an improved LHC would prove a boon for several projects on the cutting edge of physics.

The Standard Model

The Standard Model is a well-established fundamental theory of quantum physics that describes three of the four fundamental forces believed to govern our physical reality. Quantum particles occur in two basic types, quarks and leptons. Quarks bind together in different combinations to build particles like protons and neutrons. We’re familiar with protons, neutrons, and electrons because they’re the building blocks of atoms.

The “lepton family” features heavier versions of the electron — like the muon — and the quarks can coalesce into hundreds of other composite particles. Two of these, the Bottom and Kaon mesons, were culprits in this quantum mystery. The Bottom meson (B) decays to a Kaon meson (K) accompanied by a muon (mu-) and anti-muon (mu+) particle.

The Anomaly

They found a 2.5 sigma variance, or 1 in 80 probability, “which means that, in the absence of unexpected effects, i.e. new physics, a distribution more deviant than observed would be produced about 1.25 percent of the time,” Professor Spencer Klein, senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told Futurism. Klein was not involved in the study.

This means the frequency of mesons decaying into strange quarks during the LHC proton-collision tests fell a little below the expected frequency. “The tension here is that, with a 2.5 sigma [or standard deviation from the normal decay rate], either the data is off by a little bit, the theory is off by a little bit, or it’s a hint of something beyond the standard model,” Klein said. “I would say, naïvely, one of the first two is correct.”

To Klein, this variance is inevitable considering the high volume of data run by computers for LHC operations. “With Petabyte-(1015 bytes)-sized datasets from the LHC, and with modern computers, we can make a very large number of measurements of different quantities,” Klein said. “The LHC has produced many hundreds of results. Statistically, some of them are expected to show 2.5 sigma fluctuations.” Klein noted that particle physicists usually wait for a 5-sigma fluctuation before crying wolf — corresponding to roughly a 1-in-3.5-million fluctuation in data.

Image Credit: Laura Gilchrist

These latest anomalous observations do not exist in a vacuum. “The interesting aspect of the two taken in combination is how aligned they are with other anomalous measurements of processes involving B mesons that had been made in previous years,” Dr. Tevong You, co-author of the study and junior research fellow in theoretical physics at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, told Futurism. “These independent measurements were less clean but more significant. Altogether, the chance of measuring these different things and having them all deviate from the Standard Model in a consistent way is closer to 1 in 16000 probability, or 4 sigma,” Tevong said.

Extending the Standard Model

Barring statistical or theoretical errors, Tevong suspects that the anomalies mask the presence of entirely new particles, called leptoquarks or Z prime particles. Inside bottom mesons, quantum excitations of new particles could be interfering with normal decay frequency. In the study, researchers conclude that an upgraded LHC could confirm the existence of new particles, making a major update to the Standard Model in the process.

“It would be revolutionary for our fundamental understanding of the universe,” said Tevong. “For particle physics […] it would mean that we are peeling back another layer of Nature and continuing on a journey of discovering the most elementary building blocks. This would have implications for cosmology, since it relies on our fundamental theories for understanding the early universe,” he added. “The interplay between cosmology and particle physics has been very fruitful in the past. As for dark matter, if it emerges from the same new physics sector in which the Zprime or leptoquark is embedded, then we may also find signs of it when we explore this new sector.”

The Power to Know

So far, scientists at the LHC have only observed ghosts and anomalies hinting at particles that exist at higher energy levels. To prove their existence, physicists “need to confirm the indirect signs […], and that means being patient while the LHCb experiment gathers more data on B decays to make a more precise measurement,” Tevong said. “We will also get an independent confirmation by another experiment, Belle II, that should be coming online in the next few years. After all that, if the measurement of B decays still disagrees with the predictions of the Standard Model, then we can be confident that something beyond the Standard Model must be responsible, and that would point towards leptoquarks or Zprime particles as the explanation,” he added.

To establish their existence, physicists would then aim to produce the particles in colliders the same way Bottom mesons or Higgs bosons are produced, and watch them decay. “We need to be able to see a leptoquark or Zprime pop out of LHC collisions,” Tevong said. “The fact that we haven’t seen any such exotic particles at the LHC (so far) means that they may be too heavy, and more energy will be required to produce them. That is what we estimated in our paper: the feasibility of directly discovering leptoquarks or Zprime particles at future colliders with higher energy.”

Quantum Leap for the LHC

Seeking out new particles in the LHC isn’t a waiting game. The likelihood of observing new phenomena is directly proportional to how many new particles pop up in collisions. “The more the particle appears the higher the chances of spotting it amongst many other background events taking place during those collisions,” Tevong explained. For the purposes of finding new particles, he likens it to searching for a needle in a haystack; it’s easier to find a needle if the haystack is filled with them, as opposed to one. “The rate of production depends on the particle’s mass and couplings: heavier particles require more energy to produce,” he said.

Image Credit: highlander411

This is why Tevong and co-authors B.C. Allanach and Ben Gripaios recommend either extending the LHC loop’s length, thus reducing the amount of magnetic power needed to accelerate particles, or replacing the current magnets with stronger ones.

According to Tevong, the CERN laboratory is slated to keep running the LHC in present configuration until mid-2030s. Afterwards, they might upgrade the LHC’s magnets, roughly doubling its strength. In addition to souped-up magnets, the tunnel could see an enlargement from present 27 to 100 km (17 to 62 miles). “The combined effect […] would give about seven times more energy than the LHC,” Tevong said. “The timescale for completion would be at least in the 2040s, though it is still too early to make any meaningful projections.”

If the leptoquark or Z prime anomalies are confirmed, the Standard Model has to change, Tevong reiterates. “It is very likely that it has to change at energy scales directly accessible to the next generation of colliders, which would guarantee us answers,” he added. While noting that there’s no telling if dark matter has anything to do with the physics behind Zprimes or leptoquarks, the best we can do is seek “as many anomalous measurements as possible, whether at colliders, smaller particle physics experiments, dark matter searches, or cosmological and astrophysical observations,” he said. “Then the dream is that we may be able to form connections between various anomalies that can be linked by a single, elegant theory.”